Google is scanning microfilm from newspaper archives to make them available through online search, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The historical archives, including those from The Washington Post, The New York Times and Time magazine, will first be available on Google News, and then on the newspapers' Web sites.

Google will pay creating the digital copies, just as it did with its book-scanning project, which “angered some book publishers because it had failed to seek permission to scan books that were protected by copyrights. It will obtain permission from newspaper publishers before scanning their archives,” The New York Times reported.

Although Google has stated that putting the archives online, through Google first, and later on the newspapers' sites, will bring in more readers, newspapers are concerned about handing their content over to the search giant.

“The concern is that Google, in making all of the past newspaper content available, can greatly commoditize that content, just like news portals have commoditised current news content,” Ken Doctor, an Outsell analyst, told The New York Times.